Candia Lea Cole is an artist, poet, holistic health educator, and 21st century visionary who relishes the opportunity to awaken others to their wholeness through an engaging process of discovery, imagination, and self-empowerment. The widely celebrated author of three whole foods cookbooks and a prize-winning organic cook, Candia’s passion for wellness began in the early 1970’s during her teenage years, when she found herself struggling to overcome a number of serious, longstanding health problems. After recognizing the need to make a departure from allopathic medicine and the drugs that had proved ineffective in her health care, she embarked on an independent path of study in the realm of preventative health care.

While studying a variety of natural healing modalities, Candia grew to appreciate the needs of her whole being, including the need to restore a lost connection between her body, mind, emotions, and spirit, as well as a missing link between herself and the earth. Along her journey she developed an intuitive process for living well in which she learned to cultivate the wisdom of nature in her life. The nutritional arts became Candia’s primary focus, and she devoted her energies to learning about the medicinal values in nature’s food pharmacy. While experimenting in her kitchen with a variety of whole, natural foods and herbs, she developed a variety of creative methods for preparing recipes that she refers to as “eco-friendly cuisine.” Her cuisine, which she uses faithfully to detoxify, balance, and regenerate her body/mind, invited the attention and respect of two world renowned health pioneers, Dr. Paavo Airola, N.D. and Dr. Richard Barmakian, N.D., both of whom prophesized that Candia’s self-healing journey would some day make her a mentor for others struggling with health issues.

During the 1980s, Candia applied her love of food to the establishment of a natural foods catering service known as “Gourmet Gatherings.” It was through this venue that she prepared artistic gourmet food buffets for the many health professionals living in her community, including chiropractors, massage therapists, acupuncturists, and other practitioners of natural healing.

As a result of her success and the new friends that she made, she created “Meals That Heal” (a satellite catering service) specializing in the preparation of meals that catered to people with special dietary needs such as food allergies, hypoglycemia, diabetes, and cancer, to name a few disease conditions.

Inspired by the dozens of requests for recipes that she received in the process of cooking for others, Candia began to entertain the dream of creating her own cookbooks. However, many years would pass before she would realize that dream. First, she had to focus on being a “good” single parent. Then, she had to take home top honors in an organic food cook-off that was sponsored by the governor’s office, to help promote organic food and agriculture. Finally, she had to get her prize-winning recipe noticed by a California-based publisher (formerly) known as Woodbridge Press. After accomplishing these three small feats, she earned the opportunity to publish not one cookbook, but three: Not Milk NUT MILKS!, Gourmet Grains: Main Dishes Made of Nature, and Super Smoothies! Taste the Nectar of Life!

Throughout the 1990s, the recipes in Candia’s cookbooks were met with great enthusiasm by the general public as well as prominent doctors, authors, nature columnists and cookbook critics, who regarded her work with food as progressive, inspirational, and visionary. Candia appeared on a number of radio and television guest spots, and at local expos where she tapped her voice as a speaker. She also collaborated with grassroots organizations such as VRG (Vegetarian Resource Group) and FARM (Farm Animal Reform Movement) to produce school-related educational events that promoted eco sustainable eating, such as the “Great American Meat-Out” and “Celebrate Organics!” In addition, Candia served as a freelance writer (and food stylist) and contributed her work to a variety of popular mainstream health and food publications such as Dr. Julian Whitaker’s Health & Healing newsletter, Vegetarian Gourmet, Woman’s World, and Veggie Life magazines.

In 1996, after being invited to be a guest entertainer at an annual summer celebration (presented by Cell Tech Corporation, a “green” company formerly specializing in the production of super food nutrition supplements), Candia’s work grew and evolved to include a health philosophy that she says paved the groundwork for her current eco education curriculum: Bring Back the Earth! Eco-Learning Legacy. The philosophy featured in her curriculum, she says, “is rooted in the awareness that humans and the earth function as an interdependent system of life, whose aliveness is maintained through the exchange and flow of positive energy.” She adds, “Energy is the key to life and something that we must learn to cultivate in many different ways, not only through healthy food choices, but also through positive and uplifting emotions that nourish our relationship with life itself.”

As a mother and wife, Candia has had many opportunities to recognize the challenges that face parents and families in today’s toxic and stressful world. In her own life, she has found innovative ways to demonstrate the practice of eco-aware living to her own family members, including her biological son and her stepson, both of whom recognize the necessity and value of living in an organic, sustainable, and holistic way in the 21st century. Candia feels especially blessed to share her eco-lifestyle and eco-ed mission with her husband Tom, who is an eco-warrior at heart and who has long supported her in the birth of her Bring Back the Earth! Eco-Learning Legacy.